I performed a few favourites and new poems at the Vicar’s Picnic, a 2-day Kent music and arts festival, on 15 July.

Here is a poem about the festival (also published in Crack the Spine 218).

ENGLAND FORGETS

England forgets
And gets loose
On scuffed golden
Fields of wilt and weeds
It bares its back
And shows its best
Side to the sky
Pleading the beams
To fall a little longer
Mizzed by rain
For long months
We get high on heat
And we love each other
With an honesty
That cannot be bottled
And kept for when
The clouds return
We are knocking back
The now
A song we know
Is the breath of trees
We take it way back
And laugh at anything
Not embarrassed
To embrace, we part
Slow till only fingers tip
And let go
Walking like myths
On familiar streets
At midnight
That smell of honeysuckle
Or some such
Longing out the high
We glow still for a while
Until the heat leaves us
And life goes on as
England remembers itself
With half a smile
Until the next time

I performed as part of the All We Are Saying Mapping Armageddon project at Sunderland Minster on 16 March 2017.

Here is one of my poems:

WHAT EDWARD SAID

Glass shatters in Brussels
Just as it does in Paris
Blood stains concrete
Indelibly in Ankara as it
Does in Port El Kantaoui
Paranoia spreads panic
In Stockwell as it does
In Grand Rapids, Michigan
Religion sprouts leaves and
Covers asses in Belfast
As it does in Jerusalem
Death is of crushing equal
Weight in Damascus
As it is in Woolwich
The people who spend
Their long years to come
Staring red eyed at holiday
Snaps of the forever
Young talking to themselves
In gritted whispers count the same
In Homs as they do in Boston
And every time
We lose sight of that fact
The bastard holy shills
Who lit the candles in the heads
Of empty vessels with a
Family to feed and a
Paradise awaiting have
Won another victory in
Perth as surely as in Devon

Poetry CD for sale

A limited number of CDs with readings from the Mapping Armageddon poets are available for £4.50 + p&p. BUY HERE.